The Week We Searched For- March 5-9, 2012

Facebook acquires staff behind webcam eye-tracking startup GazeHawk- Facebook announced[1] plans to acquire the team behind the webcam eye-tracking startup GazeHawk—not the technology or products, though. The team will reportedly be working on products within Facebook.

Facebook Co-Founder Buys The New Republic- Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes acquired[2] the liberal magazine The New Republic this year, which has been struggling financially due to online publishing. The 28-year-old left Facebook in 2008 to join Barack Obama’s campaign as social media director.

Google buys the world a Coke via mobile ads- Google is launching[3] a new campaign to re-create classic advertising campaigns with digital technology. The first that’s been detailed is a Coca-Cola video ad campaign that re-creates the Coca-Cola “hilltop” television commercial. As part of the campaign Android and iOS users will be able to click on Coca-Cola display advertisements and send a free Coke to recipients worldwide via special Coke vending machines. Future ad campaigns will include Avis’ “We Try Harder,” Volvo’s “Drive it like you hate it” ads and Alka-Seltzer “Ralph.”

New research on brand advocates- New research[4] from Zuberance found that U.S. internet users are acting more and more as brand advocates on the web. Advocates are customers who actively give promotion online to the brands and products they enjoy. According to the study:

70% of an audience surveyed recommended 5 or more brands to their social network over the course of 1 year.

32% recommended 10 or more brands in that same timeframe.

Majority of Internet users view personalized search as bad- According to a new survey[5] from the Pew Internet & American Life Project[6], 65% of the 2,000 participants in the survey find that personalized search is “a bad thing,” as “it may limit the information you get online and what search results you see.” 29% in contrast said personalized search is a “good thing” as “it gives you results that are more relevant you.”

[7]

Pinterest Drove More Referral Traffic Than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ in February- According to new research from Shareaholic[8], Pinterest drove more referral traffic in February than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. According to the research which analyzed the analytics of 200,000 publishers, Pinterest represents 1.05% of all traffic sources, compared to Twitter, which holds .82%.

What we’re reading:

A Day in the Life of the Internet-[10]A new infographic from MBAonline.com[11] breaks down daily global online activity. Some fun facts include that 294 billion emails are sent daily, 2 million blog posts are written, and 47 billion minutes are spent on Facebook.